Keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures

Every shortcut on this page is handled inside the page itself, so the web app and Cashboard Desktop behave the same. Cashboard Desktop adds no menu shortcuts or system-wide shortcuts of its own. The Boards page covers the Add panel, the Style tab and board management that these keys act on.

On macOS, press Cmd where this page shows Ctrl, and Option where it shows Alt. The command palette and the tooltips show the key for your system: Ctrl on Windows and Linux, ⌘ on macOS.

A few rules decide whether a key does anything at all:

• Keys with Ctrl or Cmd work while a board is open, even when a button has focus. All of them except Ctrl K stand down while you type in a text field, so the field keeps its own undo, cut and paste. Ctrl A, Ctrl C, Ctrl X and Ctrl V also stand down while a widget is active.
• Single keys (V, P, H, Space, Enter, Shift 1 and Shift 2) are ignored while keyboard focus is in a field, a drop-down, a button or a link. After you click a button in the top bar, click an empty spot on the board once, then press the key.
• The canvas shortcuts need the canvas on screen. The template picker and the shared-board review screen have no canvas, so only the top bar shortcuts (Ctrl K, undo and redo) apply there.
• Focus mode hides the top bar, so Ctrl K, undo and redo are off while it is on. The canvas shortcuts keep working.

These shortcuts use Ctrl or Cmd. They work with either canvas tool. Copy, cut, duplicate and the two order keys need at least one selected widget.

Undo covers adding and removing widgets, moving and resizing, style and setting changes, and renaming the board. A whole drag or resize is one step, and each arrow key press is one step. Moving the view is not a step: undo and redo keep the view where it is, so a pan or zoom never costs you an undo press.

These keys have no modifier and are identical on every system. The focus rule above applies: a field, button or link that has focus blocks them.

In windows 1024 px wide or more the top bar adds view buttons. Zoom out and Zoom in change the zoom by 10 percentage points per click, and Reset view sets 100% with the board origin 32 px from the top left corner. The two zoom buttons zoom around the board origin rather than the middle of the screen, so content can drift sideways. Ctrl with the scroll wheel zooms around the pointer instead.

The scroll wheel pans the board. It does not zoom. Hold Ctrl (Cmd on macOS) to zoom with it, or pinch on a trackpad.

Click a widget to select it. A selected widget gets a highlight ring and resize handles on its corners and edges, and the Style tab edits it. Several widgets can be selected at once, and the move, resize, order, duplicate and delete controls below then act on all of them.

A locked widget (Lock position in the Style tab) ignores the arrow keys, cannot be dragged or resized, and shows no resize handles. Dragging it pans the board instead. It can still be removed with Delete and restyled. Locked widgets also stay put when you align or distribute a selection.

Selecting

• Drag on empty canvas to draw a selection box. Every widget the box touches is selected, including one it only overlaps. Shift is not needed. A selection box that starts outside a frame and crosses its edge selects the frame too. Start and finish the box inside the frame to pick only its contents.
• Shift, Ctrl or Cmd with a click adds a widget to the selection or removes it.
• A plain click on one widget of a group selects only that widget. Click the selected widget a second time to make it active.
• Click on empty canvas, or press Esc, to clear the selection.
• Ctrl A selects every widget, and Shift 2 fits the selection on screen.
• The middle mouse button pans the board in the Select tool, so a drag never has to start on empty canvas.

Smart guides

While one widget is being dragged, red lines show when its edge or centre lines up with a neighbouring widget, and the widget snaps to that line within 8 screen pixels. The guide wins over grid snapping. Dragging several widgets together keeps their layout and snaps to the grid only.

Frames

Dragging a frame by its header, alone or as part of a selection, carries the widgets whose centre is inside it. Locked widgets are not carried, and neither are widgets you selected along with the frame, since those move anyway. When two frames move together, only the first selected frame carries its contents. Nudging a frame with the arrow keys moves the frame alone.

Right-click menu

Right-click a widget for Duplicate, Copy, Cut, Paste, Bring to front, Send to back, Lock or Unlock, Zoom to selection and Remove. Right-click inside a selection and the menu acts on all of it. Right-click empty canvas for Paste, Select all, Fit board on screen, Add note and Add frame. The menu does not open on a widget with the Hand tool, and inside the text field of an active widget you get the browser's own menu instead. Esc closes it without clearing the selection.

Align and distribute

With several widgets selected, the Style tab shows an Arrange panel with six align buttons (left edges, horizontal centres, right edges, top edges, vertical centres, bottom edges), two distribute buttons that need three or more widgets, and Bring to front, Send to back and Remove. The command palette lists the same commands. Locked widgets neither move nor set the alignment line. Distribute does nothing when the widgets overlap or when one encloses the others.

A selected widget only highlights, and it shows the hint Click to use this widget. An active widget takes your clicks, the scroll wheel and typing. Make a widget active by clicking it a second time, by double-clicking its body, or by pressing Enter while it is selected. A widget you add from the Add panel or from the command palette starts out active.

To leave an active widget, press Esc (not while typing in a field), click empty canvas, or select another widget. Choosing the Hand tool ends it too.

Most widgets have no keys of their own beyond ordinary typing. These do:

The command palette is a search box over board actions. Open it with Ctrl K (Cmd K on macOS) or the Commands button, type a few letters and press Enter. The Add panel has no search field, so the palette is the fast way to find a widget by name.

Keys in the palette

How matching works

The palette keeps entries whose name contains what you typed, ignoring letter case and any spaces at either end. It is a plain substring match on the name, not a fuzzy search, so your words must appear in the name in that order. chart finds Add price chart and every Jump to entry for a widget with chart in its title, while price graph finds nothing. The hint on the right is not searched.

Many Add entries carry extra keywords in brackets, and those count. Typing bybit finds Add live liquidations (Binance, Bybit, OKX), zora finds Add Base launches (Zora and Clanker), and lighter finds Add Robinhood perps (Lighter). With nothing typed the list shows everything: the Add entries first, then actions, boards, templates and Jump to entries.

What the list contains

Build several widgets at once

Type widget names separated by commas, and, + or &, and the first row becomes a Build entry. Typing btc chart, funding, odds shows Build Price chart, Funding rates, Prediction markets with the hint 3 widgets. Names are matched against plain words such as prices, perps and odds. A phrase the palette does not recognise is skipped, and the hint says so.

Press Enter and all the widgets are added as one block below whatever is already on the board, none of them selected, and the view fits the whole board. A recipe also starts when your text begins with build, make or create, and then a single widget name is enough.

Focus mode hides the top bar and the tool panel, clears the selection and fits the board in view, which suits a screen share or a second monitor. Enter it with the Enter focus mode button in the top bar (windows 1024 px wide or more) or with the palette entry of the same name. The canvas shortcuts and gestures keep working in it. Ctrl K, undo and redo do not.

These are common in other canvas tools and are not in Cashboard:

• Redo is Ctrl Shift Z. There is no Ctrl Y.
• There are no group or ungroup commands. Frames are the way to move widgets together.
• The board has no keys for zooming in and out and no Ctrl S. Boards save as you work, and the top bar shows Saved locally (the words appear in windows 1024 px wide or more) or Save failed.
• Nothing can be dragged in from the Add panel or dropped from a file, so add widgets with a click in the panel or from the palette.
• The Add panel has no search field. The palette does the searching.
• Copied widgets stay inside Cashboard for the session. They are not placed on the system clipboard.

• Add a widget without the mouse: Ctrl K, type chart, Enter. The new widget is active, so you can type into it at once.
• Build a starter board in one line: type chart, funding, liquidations in the palette and press Enter.
• Pan across widgets without changing tools: hold Space, drag, then let go.
• Drag slowly near another widget and let the red guide line grab it; the arrow keys then move the last pixel.
• On a large board, Shift 1 fits everything, Shift 2 fits the selection, and Jump to in the palette frames a single widget.
• If a key does nothing, click an empty spot on the board and try again. A button or field holding focus is the usual cause.